Owner, Not Mule, Is The Dumb Animal

RAY RECCHI

December 2, 1990|By RAY RECCHI, Lifestyle Columnist

Is it cruel to make a mule dive from a 30-foot platform into 5 feet of water?

According to Birmingham, Ala., Municipal Judge Tennant Smallwood, it is not. He made the ruling last week in response to a complaint by an animal-rights activist against the mule`s owner, Tim Rivers of McIntosh, Fla.

But being the judge doesn`t make him right. The way I see it (and the way four veterinarians who testified at the hearing saw it, too), the answer is an emphatic and obvious yes.

Humans are the only beasts foolish enough to try such a stunt without being threatened or otherwise coerced. It is not only frightening, it hurts.

And I speak from experience. In the spring of 1967, I cannonballed off the high dive at the Florida State University pool on a dare, creating the world`s first giant wave pool and darn near destroying my derriere in the process. For weeks, I couldn`t sit without wincing.

If I had it to do over, I would lose face instead of busting butt. Fortunately, I have a choice. The Diving Mule does not.

It is the mule`s misfortune to be indentured to Rivers, who makes his living by dragging the mule around to county fairs and the like, charging people to see the animal do its stuff -- over and over and over again.

OR WOULD YOU RATHER BE A MULE?

Which takes us beyond the question of cruelty to the question of why anyone would pay to see a mule dive off a 30-foot platform into 5 feet of water. What`s the attraction?

If it were a human making such a dive, I could understand it. A person would be demonstrating skill, overcoming fear and risking injury or death of his own free will. It might be worth a buck or two to see that.

But an animal doesn`t care about applause or glory. The Diving Mule isn`t performing so it can save up to retire to a condo in Miami Beach. An animal would do such a stunt only because it had no choice.

So paying to see it, and applauding it, seem a little sick.

And I`m not one who is often in agreement with animal-rights activists. Sometimes I think they behave like jackasses.

Last spring, for example, activists protested a fundraiser at Westwood High School in Fort Pierce where students paid 25 cents a vote to elect someone to kiss a pig at a school assembly.

``Maybe they feel it`s funny and cute,`` said Marian Lentz of the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida. ``But for a 10-week-old pig, it could be very scary and stressful to be in an environment that`s unfamiliar, noisy and crowded.``

I disagree. After all, a kiss is just a kiss. And we treat baby humans like that all the time.

A LAB RAT`S LOT IS NOT A HAPPY ONE

What`s more, I buy leather, eat meat and thank goodness for medical advances made at the expense of laboratory rats. When it comes to choosing which life should be risked for the greater good, my vote goes to the rat every time.

Still, I find myself agreeing with animal-rights people more often than I used to.

Although animal rights seems to be one of those ``with me or agin` me`` kind of issues, I believe there are a lot of us who are stuck in the middle. We don`t believe animals have the same rights as humans. But we don`t believe they should be hurt or destroyed for nothing more than human vanity or financial gain.

Injuring or killing animals to advance medical science, for example, is unfortunate but important and necessary.

Doing the same thing merely to have fur coats, create ``new and improved`` cosmetics, or develop a really keen county-fair attraction is trivial and therefore cruel and inhumane.

Of course, there are those who justify such treatment by invoking the superiority of man. Like Patty Rivers, who defends her husband`s treatment of the Diving Mule by saying, ``Animals were put here for man`s use.``

That is not only arrogant but illogical.

The two things that make us superior to other animals, after all, are our intellect and our humanity.

So people who don`t have or don`t use those qualities have no edge at all.